EVENTS

Job opening in Oxymoron Studies

The Women’s Studies Program at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, will offer a one-year postdoctoral fellowship in Islamic Feminist Studies in 2012-2013.

The Women’s Studies Program at Wheaton College is pleased to announce a one- year postdoctoral fellowship supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The fellow will pursue research and teach three courses in the Women’s Studies Program during the appointment, including Transnational Feminisms, Introduction to Women’s Studies or Feminist Theory, and a course in his or her area of specialty. Women’s Studies is particularly interested in scholars of Islamic Feminism working on critical sexualities, but welcomes applications from all scholars in this field.

Islamic feminism is a form of feminism concerned with the role of women in Islam. It aims for the full equality of all Muslims, regardless of gender, in public and private life. Islamic feminists advocate women’s rights, gender equality, and social justice grounded in an Islamic framework. Although rooted in Islam, the movement’s pioneers have also utilised secular and European or non-Muslim feminist discourses and recognize the role of Islamic feminism as part of an integrated global feminist movement.

Advocates of the movement seek to highlight the deeply rooted teachings of equality in the religion, and encourage a questioning of the patriarchal interpretation of Islamic teaching through the Qur’an (holy book), hadith (sayings of Muhammad) and sharia (law) towards the creation of a more equal and just society.

The art of verbal self-defence, e.g. “Modesty isn’t defined in the Koran and I think I’m dressing modestly” followed by the art of outdistancing your pursuers. The art of disguising yourself as a male. The art of forging a brotherly ID for your male friend. How to anonymize your internet connection. The art of fleeing the country.

Lulz aside, it remains the case that women’s lives in the large part of the world dominated by Islam are more likely to be improved by people who position themselves as ‘Islamic Feminists’ than by people who mock the concept. Positioning oneself as such within an islamic society is, whatever one might think of the religious context, a brave and noble act; whereas mocking it is just cheap.

Whether Islamic Feminists in Massachusetts will have any effect either way is another question, of course.

Oxmoron doesn’t mean that. Well, I realise it has come to mean that and this is probably just petty pedantry, but its a pity to lose these differences (I still can’t quite give up on ‘disinterested/uninterested’ either). An oxmoron is contradiction for rhetorical effect (‘parting is such sweet sorrow’), logical failure like this is just a contradiction in terms.

It is an attempt by Salafists to appropriate the language and concepts of modern feminism, and to then stand them on their heads so that they can be harnassed to the misogynistic oppression and degradation of women all across the islamic world.

Only in Islam, you see, can women be truly “liberated” because only in Islam is a women’s modesty truly protected.

The burka, then, is the penultimate symbol of feminist self-realisation with strict gender segregation and life under virtual house arrest *empowering*.

All obscurantist, salafist initiatives in wester n universities and colleges are framed in such scintillating and beguiling progressivist language.

A golden, guilded invitation to a drab and dreary gender enslavement…that’s what Islamic Feminism means.

“Islamic Feminism” is Maryam Namazie and Aliaa Magda Elmahdy and other like them who fight for the rights of women. “Islamic Feminism” is sometimes a death sentence. “Islamic Feminism” is the study of extreme patriarchy. It is most certainly not the study of advances in gender equality in the Islam of Sharia law.

Other courses on offer include “Pretending Islam Isn’t Crap”, “Medieval Theocracies Are Just As Valid As Social Democracies Even Though I Personally Wouldn’t Wan’t To Live In One” and “Karen Armstrong Is A Liar”

I agree with Dave at #14. As little love as I have for religion, women living in predominantly Muslim societies who identify as Islamic feminists have a better handle on their respective cultures than those of us in the West do, and are therefore more likely to be able to effect positive changes. Which, I should add, are more likely to lead to less religiosity in the future.

You may have noticed that we, and especially the U.S., don’t have a superb track record when it comes to going into other countries with cultures alien to a majority of Americans in order to “fix” things.

I’m equally torn between thinking this could end up being an appropriate of feminism as mentioned by Boomer – where oppression of women gets dressed up as ‘liberation’ and ’empowerment’ or where women talk about how by submitting to a misogynistic social system in the name of cultural identity is somehow ’empowering,’ and thinking the other way; that yes, perhaps people who position themselves this way might have a decent chance at actually making some concrete gains for women.

Or that it could be a realpolitik attempt to cherry-pick bits of Islamic texts to further a progressive agenda for women, kind of a fifth-column deal. Marketing feminism as something that need not be ‘un-Islamic.’

I’m equally torn between thinking this could end up being an appropriate of feminism as mentioned by Boomer – where oppression of women gets dressed up as ‘liberation’ and ‘empowerment’ or where women talk about how by submitting to a misogynistic social system in the name of cultural identity is somehow ‘empowering,’

ONe will only know the true content and intent of this programme by finding out who is funding it. Gulf states are flush with cashand often fund such iniatives. Islamists are very adept at wrapping their backward medieval ideology in the vocabulary of progressivism.

Universities and colleges all over the western world have been accepting millions and millions of dollars to set up islamist studies programmes ( “Insitutes For Dialogue and Peace” type thingies) and all of them are managed and staffed by Tariq Ramadan clones.

This Islamist Feminist Studies Fellowship, I suspect, isn’t just designed to whitewash islam,s shoddy treatment of women, it will also act as an instrument for some pretty strident on-campus proslytisation.

Bottom line of it all? Islam was a boon to women’s rights ( oh yes!) and Mohammed was a feminist.

That is, of course, when he wasn’t acting in the capacity of an enviromentalist…or whatever